The present invention relates generally to a method for testing electric motors and, in particular, to a system for detecting faults in multiple AC traction motor installations.
The present AC traction motor architecture employed in electric locomotive traction devices or trucks connects each phase output from an inverter to each traction motor through an intermediate wiring harness, commonly referred to as the “milking machine”. The milking machine splits each inverter phase output cable into a set of parallel motor cables which greatly complicates the identification of faulted motors within a truck assembly. Historically, under worst case conditions, one has to disassemble all parallel motor connections in order to locate one motor that had developed a fault. This is a time consuming process.